Archive for February, 2013

End of the shortest month with a double issue of Asimov’s, a single of Analog, and a rare original anthology, which takes best of show this time. A Good Story award to “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer”, and there are several other good stories in Clockwork Phoenix 4. Publications […]

In my Asimov’s review of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s previous book, World-Fantasy-Award-winner There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, I called her voice “a blend of Margo Lanagan with Zoran Živković.” I have since flashed on the fact that the closest single voice to hers in our genre is […]

(Howard was under the weather, so it’s just me solo this time out.) John Dies at the End is a weird, silly, lightweight, low-budget science fiction comedy. If you’re in the mood for that, you’ll enjoy it as long as you dial your expectations knob down to modest. In the frame story, white protagonist David […]

Would you care to name a famous fantasist from Argentina? If you named Jorge Luis Borges or Alberto Manguel, bravo! Your World Fantastika Radar is working well. But if you named Angélica Gorodischer, your literary antennae are truly super-sensitive and tuned into a phenomenon rare and delightful. In her native land, Gorodischer is applauded and […]

The usual monthly ezines. I call Lightspeed best overall this time, particularly the more explicit fantasy half. Publications Reviewed Lightspeed, February 2013 Eclipse Online, February 2013 Strange Horizons, February 2013 Beneath Ceaseless Skies #114-115, February 2013 Lightspeed, February 2013 A strong issue. As often, much more fantastic than sciencefictional. Some author name changes here – […]

How could the multiple subjects, settings and genres in James Van Pelt’s fourth collection, Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille, be anything more than a mixed bag? A suburban dad whose son dreams of dragons, a 30-something virgin in an oddly haunted house, a moon dweller overseeing ‘‘full reality skin shell rentals’’ for […]

‘‘The best of all possible worlds’’ is one of those phrases whose original meaning has been clobbered by irony. A lot of readers will immediately think of Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, and a few might remember James Branch Cabell’s famous quip that an optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds while a pessimist […]

A very mixed set of publications here, with the debut issue of a new zine. No Good Story award this time. Publications Reviewed F&SF, Mar/Apr 2013 Interzone #244, Jan-Feb 2013 Clarkesworld, February 2013 Waylines, January 2013 Apex Magazine, February 2013 “Dead on Arrival” by Crystal Lynn Hilbert F&SF, Mar/Apr 2013 An inferior issue. A couple […]

At its core, Adam Roberts’s By Light Alone is a book about economics and class that is premised on a simple supposition: what if some technology came along that allowed the haves to no longer worry about providing the have-nots with food? And what spun out of Roberts’s fertile brain is a brilliant book about, […]